Exposed tissue surfaces, including skin and mucosa, are lined with multilayers of epithelial cells. Among their functions, they form a barrier to prevent microbe penetration. Significant effort has focused on understanding how epithelial cells participate in immune responses when infectious disease occurs, or during other forms of tissue challenge.
Keratin proteins are an extremely diverse and ancient class of biomolecule. Previous studies of keratins have focused on mechanical, structural and architectural functions of keratins, their roles in intracellular signaling, and changes to expression in certain diseases.
There is a need in the art for antimicrobial agents, e.g., agents that inhibit growth of microbes that infect epithelial cells.